The deets

We are teaching a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course and Appropriate Technology Course (ATC), back to back, May 28 through June 23, 2017. With 8 guest instructors, and a major focus on homestead-scale permaculture. The PDC will have a heavy emphasis on Design.

Instructor, Tim Barker

The tickets sold quickly for these courses. We have had a lot of interest from people wanting to purchase video footage of the courses. Someone suggested live streaming of the courses.

Hard working permaculture design course students

Now we need some equipment to make all of this magic happen. So, here’s an opportunity for everyone who is interested to help out with purchasing some special equipment, and getting these amazing courses on film.

Tim spends his time between Australia and New Zealand (and sometimes the US) as a semi-professional pyromaniac and mad scientist, teaching people how to burn stuff and make really cool machines and devices for low-carbon living. He has a history of teaching Permaculture Design Courses with Geoff Lawton and currently teaches appropriate technology for the Koanga institute in New Zealand and Very Edible Gardens (VEG) in Melbourne, to name a few.

Paul Wheaton, the bad boy of Permaculture, was proclaimed by Geoff Lawton in 2012 to be the Duke of Permaculture. He is the creator of two on-line communities. One is about Permaculture, permies.com, and one is about software engineering, CodeRanch.com. He is keen on making permaculture both beautiful and profitable.

Dubbed Goddess of the Soil by Paul Wheaton, Helen is a master gardener, farmer and consultant. She had first hand experience with Masanobu Fukuoka and was a horticulture extension agent in Montana for 15 years. She owned and operated Biodesign Farm near Missoula, Montana for 17 years. She has been doing consulting for different vegetable growers, including a 2000 acre organic fruit and vegetable farm. She is now an advocate of veganic permaculture.

Ernie is a botanist, educator, writer, researcher, rocket mass heater innovator, natural builder, and boat aficionado. He worked in the merchant navy and has tremendous experience with hydraulic and hot water systems. Ernie is semi-retired due to a disabling injury, but still makes time for the occasional workshop or fascinating prototype project. He co-authored multiple books with his wife, Erica, and is featured in many videos, documentaries and podcasts. Ernie studied permaculture under Ianto Evans and played a role in hosting Bill Mollison and Masanobu Fukuoka.

Erica is a science and art educator, curriculum developer, writer, illustrator, researcher, and rocket mass heater innovator. She loves making things from scratch - anything from blueberry scones to the oven itself. Erica is a skilled educator and project coordinator, with over 15 years experience building teamwork and leading hands-on learning experiences. She and Ernie have taught numerous workshops on natural building and rocket mass heaters. Erica has written multiple books on rocket mass heaters, fire making, and survival shelters. She is featured in many videos, documentaries, and podcasts on rocket mass heaters.

Jacqueline is a biodynamic farmer, author, and natural beekeeper. She is known for her gentle and understanding way with bees. She appears in the honeybee documentary, Queen of the Sun, and was hired by the USDA to work with rural farmers and beekeepers in the Dominican Republic using historic methods of respectful beekeeping. She lives on a farm in Washington state with her husband, Joseph, where they have orchards, gardens, two big greenhouses, a small forest, rich pastures and plenty of flowering bee forage. Jacqueline also has lots of experience raising livestock: cows, goats, chickens for laying and broilers, turkeys, and horses. She has two websites: SpiritBee.com and friendlyhaven.com.

Protégé of legendary Austrian farmer, Sepp Holzer, Zach is the first person to earn Holzer Practitioner Certification outside of the Krameterhof training program. Blending a unique combination of systems thinking, empathy, and awareness, Zach uses an action-oriented process to improve human relationships with earth. Enhancing ecosystems and harvesting natural productivity over time is the ultimate goal - with high initial input, high yield systems that will last until the next ice age.

Zach currently has projects in 11 nations on 4 continents, spanning a wide range of climates, contexts, land-forms and ecosystems. Having experience with a wide range of techniques and systems (natural building, greenhouses, carpentry, watershed restoration), Zach also graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Ecology. He has two websites elementalecosystems.com and holzerpermaculture.us

Davin is an architect, artist, and entrepreneur. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Architecture and has 16 years of drafting experience. Davin has established two community gardens in Georgetown, Texas and he is the first to map Wheaton Labs. Davin practices architecture as a one-man firm and will soon be a small restaurant chain partner. He is the future illustrator of Paul's book on "Wofatis".

Reward Descriptions

$1 THANKS!

Support us at any level and you get everything in the "THANKS" level. We want to express our gratitude with stuff. Good stuff! Useful stuff!

This was our "thanks" packagecreated for our "World Domination Gardening 3-dvd set" kickstarter. Hugelkultur is soil on wood. If you do it right, you can grow your favorite garden without irrigation. This video shows a dozen different hugelkultur sites and is packed with advice. 16 minutes long. kickstarter / dvds / microdoc.

Switching from electric heat to a rocket mass heater reduces your carbon footprint as much as parking seven cars. This is a DIY wood burning contraption that heats your home with one-tenth the wood a conventional wood stove uses, and puts out about one one-hundredth the smoke. A 30-minute video showing five different people using a rocket mass heater and talking about their favorite way to light and care for rocket mass heaters. This was our "thanks" for our "Better Wood Heat: DIY Rocket Mass Heaters" 4-DVD set kickstarter. kickstarter / dvds / microdoc.

Another kickstarter that did really well; and we had many requests that the cards be turned into a book. Each card covers a powerful aspect of permaculture. Some feature people, some feature a philosophy and some feature a technique. I'm told that it takes an hour and a half to read the ebook. kickstarter / cards / ebook.

Jacqueline Freeman is author of "The Song of Increase", a book about a very different style of relationship with honeybees. In this presentation she covers some of the practical aspects of raising bees. I've called her techniques "Reverence for Bees". The presentation covers "Treatment-Free Beekeeping".

If you look at DVD 4 from the "Wood Burning Stoves 2.0" kickstarter, you will see where we had a contest between a J-Tube style-rocket cook stove and a propane turkey cooker. Naturally, the rocket cook stove won. Lots of heat for your big cooking and canning needs. And then we stumbled onto using the same contraption as something of a forge. Actually, a pretty good forge that doesn't need bellows. Erica Wisner has put that design into plans for you. And, as you can see above, Erica will also be one of our PDC instructors. kickstarter / dvds / plans.

Public Thanks

I've seen some other kickstarters do this and I wanna do it much, much better. They post your name to a facebook page where it is lost and forgotten within a couple days. We are going to post it to our thread at permies.com where we have perennial discussions. Thousands of people will actually look at the list for years to come. And, naturally, we will give you a chance to be as creative and as silly as you want. While some people will post their names, or their kids, or maybe plug their business, you can also divulge your plans for world domination and give yourself all the galactic titles you want. Check out the thanks page from our last kickstarter.

$5 CANDY!

Keeping in mind that the real purpose here is to bring in some coin so we can get the equipment to do live streaming, we felt we needed to entice people to put in $5 rather than leave their contribution at $1. Of course, everything at the $1 level is offered to our supporters at $5 or more.

I wrote a book! It was a collaboration with Marjory Wildcraft of The Grow Network. It's 38 pages long. It is a mish-mash of my article Raising Chickens 2.0 - No More Coop and Run, my presentation "Concerns About the Way Most People Raise Chickens", and my permaculture design course presentation, "Animals in the Landscape." When we wrote it, I intended to sell it and to offer it on my next kickstarter. THIS kickstarter! I forgot to try to sell it. I should start selling it. Soon. That would be smart.

This is from my "Wood Burning Stoves 2.0" kickstarter. Much like this kickstarter, people asked me to video a two-day workshop and sell them the video. For that project, it was just a giant doofus in overalls (me) holding a fancy video camera. But the kickstarter did far better than expected, so a professional editor turned the Friday night 3.5 hour "Fire Science" presentation into something much better which is now 1 hour and 37 minutes long. This is DVD 1 of 4. kickstarter / dvds

This is actually five different plans mashed into 40 pages of detailed plans. The trick with rocket mass heaters and greenhouses is that the rocket mass heater will need to be water tolerant, so nearly all of our indoor designs won't work. plans

PDC and ATC instructor's notes

Every time Tim Barker teaches a course his notes get overhauled, his presentations get clearer, and more content can be squeezed in. Now his teacher's notes for the Appropriate Technology Course are at 51 pages and his Permaculture Design Course notes are at 208 pages. These notes will be provided as PDF files.

Access to the Secret Inner Circle Forum on permies.com

Join our past kickstarter supporters in a place where you can talk about stuff without the prying eyes of google or "them". forums

Plus everything in "THANKS".

$10 - One evening presentation

When the whole event is over, you'll be given the list of Permaculture Design Course presentations recorded and you'll be able to choose which one you want. Each evening presentation is about two hours long. You can see the list of scheduled presentation below, in the $30 description.

Plus everything in "CANDY" and "THANKS".

$15 - One full day

When the whole event is over, you will be given the list of the days recorded and you will be able to choose which one you want. One day will feature about 8 to 10 hours of video.

Plus everything in "CANDY" and "THANKS".

$30 - All evening presentations

When the whole event is over, you will be given all of the evening presentations for the Permaculture Design Course. This will be a total of about 20 hours and is currently scheduled as:

Day 2: Ernie & Erica Wisner - Fire

Day 3: Byron Joel - Introduction to Keyline Design

Day 5: Davin Hoyt - Indoor Vermiculture

Day 6: Zach Weiss - Elemental Ecology

Day 8: Helen Atthowe -Creating a Commercial Forest Garden

Day 9: Jacqueline Freeman - Building Relationships with Farm Animals

Day 10: Paul Wheaton - Animals in the Landscape part 1

Day 11: Paul Wheaton - Animals in the Landscape part 2

Day 12: Jocelyn Campbell - Money & Finance

Day 14: Talent Show

Plus everything in "CANDY" and "THANKS".

$60 - All of the ATC

When the whole event is over, you will be given all of the video collected during the Appropriate Technology Course. This will be about 100 hours of video.

Plus everything in "CANDY" and "THANKS".

$75 - All of the PDC

When the whole event is over, you will be given all of the video collected during the Permaculture Design Course. This will be about 120 hours of video.

Plus everything in "CANDY" and "THANKS".

$100 - (BOTH) all of the PDC and ATC

When the whole event is over, you will be given all of the video collected during the Permaculture Design Course and the Appropriate Technology Course. This will be about 220 hours of video.

Plus everything in "CANDY" and "THANKS".

$120 - (DOWNLOAD) both events as a tiny download

When the whole event is over, you will be given all of the video
collected during the Permaculture Design Course and the Appropriate Technology Course as a "tiny download". This will be
about 220 hours of video as small mp4 files. Probably 360p. It will
probably be about 100 gigs. We offer this because a lot of our peeps
don't have good internet at home, but they can pop into town, download
it, and watch it later.

Plus everything in "CANDY" and "THANKS".

$150 - (BOTHLIVE) all of the PDC and ATC, live and recorded

You will be able to watch both events live and ask questions. And within 24 hours of being recorded (we hope it will usually be within 3 hours), you will have access to the recorded version.

It is possible that we might be able to set things up so that you can visit with some folks during meals and breaks if anybody volunteers for that and our tech guys are cool with that.

Plus everything in "DOWNLOAD", "BOTH", "CANDY", and "THANKS".

$200 - (BUNDLE) add in some of our previous kickstarter products

Several of the people involved in this kickstarter were involved in our previous kickstarters. There are a total of three products added here that come from three previous kickstarters:

$400 - Producer for a day

We will add your name (with all the creativity you desire) as "producer" at the beginning of each segment for an entire day. This will appear live and in the recorded stuff. If we cannot add it digitally, we will write it on a piece of paper or, more likely, little chalkboards we have, and hold it up in front of the camera.

You would have to pick which day you want before we record for that day.

$1000 - Producer for all of the PDC or all of the ATC

We will add your name (with all the creativity you desire) as "producer" at the beginning of each segment for all of the Permaculture Design Course or all of the Appropriate Technology Course. This will appear live and in the recorded stuff. If we cannot add it in digitally, we will write it on a piece of paper or, more likely, little chalkboards we have, and hold it up in front of the camera.

$1500 - Producer for all of the PDC and all of the ATC

We will add your name (with all the creativity you desire) as "producer" at the beginning of each segment for all of the Permaculture Design Course and all of the Appropriate Technology Course. This will appear live and in the recorded stuff. If we cannot add it in digitally, we will write it on a piece of paper, or, more likely, little chalkboards we have, and hold it up in front of the camera.

$1500 - Supreme Executive Producer with bacon, cheese and sparkles

We will burn your name (with all the creativity you desire) as "Supreme Executive Producer with bacon, cheese and sparkles" onto a piece of wood and hold that up in front of the camera for every segment.

Our Tech Team

Josiah Wallingford is the owner of PermaEthos and Brink of Freedom. He is an army veteran, anarcho-capitalist, permaculturist, community builder, prepper, videographer, editor, moderator, co-host and . . . too much other stuff to list here. Basically, he does a lot of behind the scenes stuff and works his ass off to move the permaculture movement forward. For this project, Josiah will be working with Daniel Bender to capture the event on video and broadcast it live to you guys.

Daniel Bender

Daniel Bender

Daniel Bender has been involved in all things tech for most of his life. He worked in Hollywood in the 80s for CNN, Disney and Varitel Video. In the 90s Mr. Bender was active in the early internet days with a successful dating site. Since then, he has been involved with various video productions, both online and offline, as well as book projects. In the last few years, he has explored the permaculture arena.

Risks and challenges

We have been testing a variety of fat internet connections, so we think we have a solution.

We have a way to set up a collection of cameras and pick which camera we want to use at the moment. But we need to get the equipment and really test it.

Support this project

Select this reward

Pledge $1 or more
About $1.00

THANKS!

Support us at any level and you get everything in the "THANKS" level. Other kickstarters take your dollar and say something like "we will send good vibes your way!" We want to express our gratitude with actual stuff. Good stuff! Useful stuff!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $250 or more
About $250

DESIGN

Participate in design process via conference calls with Paul Wheaton and other students at this level. The whole group, including Paul, will be able to view and comment on your design. And you will be able to comment on the designs of others - live! Sessions in July, August and September.